"Cloning" row or column vectors

Question

Hello, Sometimes it is useful to "clone" a row or column vector to a matrix. By cloning I mean converting a row vector such as

[1,2,3]

Into a matrix

[[1,2,3]
 [1,2,3]
 [1,2,3]
]

or a column vector such as

[1
 2
 3
]

into

[[1,1,1]
 [2,2,2]
 [3,3,3]
]

In matlab or octave this is done pretty easily:

 x = [1,2,3]
 a = ones(3,1) * x
 a =

    1   2   3
    1   2   3
    1   2   3

 b = (x') * ones(1,3)
 b =

    1   1   1
    2   2   2
    3   3   3

I want to repeat this in numpy, but unsuccessfully

In [14]: x = array([1,2,3])
In [14]: ones((3,1)) * x
Out[14]:
array([[ 1.,  2.,  3.],
       [ 1.,  2.,  3.],
       [ 1.,  2.,  3.]])
# so far so good
In [16]: x.transpose() * ones((1,3))
Out[16]: array([[ 1.,  2.,  3.]])
# DAMN
# I end up with 
In [17]: (ones((3,1)) * x).transpose()
Out[17]:
array([[ 1.,  1.,  1.],
       [ 2.,  2.,  2.],
       [ 3.,  3.,  3.]])

Why wasn't the first method (In[16]) working? Is there a way to achieve this task in python in a more elegant way?

Answer 1

Here's an elegant, Pythonic way to do it:

>>> array([[1,2,3],]*3)
array([[1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3]])

>>> array([[1,2,3],]*3).transpose()
array([[1, 1, 1],
       [2, 2, 2],
       [3, 3, 3]])

the problem with [16] seems to be that the transpose has no effect for an array. you're probably wanting a matrix instead:

>>> x = array([1,2,3])
>>> x
array([1, 2, 3])
>>> x.transpose()
array([1, 2, 3])
>>> matrix([1,2,3])
matrix([[1, 2, 3]])
>>> matrix([1,2,3]).transpose()
matrix([[1],
        [2],
        [3]])

Answer 2

First note that with numpy's broadcasting operations it's usually not necessary to duplicate rows and columns. See this and this for descriptions.

But to do this, repeat and newaxis are probably the best way

In [12]: x = array([1,2,3])

In [13]: repeat(x[:,newaxis], 3, 1)
Out[13]: 
array([[1, 1, 1],
       [2, 2, 2],
       [3, 3, 3]])

In [14]: repeat(x[newaxis,:], 3, 0)
Out[14]: 
array([[1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3]])

This example is for a row vector, but applying this to a column vector is hopefully obvious. repeat seems to spell this well, but you can also do it via multiplication as in your example

In [15]: x = array([[1, 2, 3]])  # note the double brackets

In [16]: (ones((3,1))*x).transpose()
Out[16]: 
array([[ 1.,  1.,  1.],
       [ 2.,  2.,  2.],
       [ 3.,  3.,  3.]])

Answer 3

Use numpy.tile:

>>> tile(array([1,2,3]), (3, 1))
array([[1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3]])